Morris Minor
There’s a lot to do but Matt can’t walk away from this one
Little did I know, aged sixteen, that when I handed over £1100 of my hard-earned Saturday-job cash that the ever so slightly crusty-round-the-edges Morris Minor I was buying would go on to change my life.
With six months to go until I could actually drive the car, I decided the most sensible thing I could do would be to take it apart. That was the easy bit. My uncle, Ivor, helped to bleed the brakes, and then with a growing list of welding and, eventually, a respray. I learned an awful lot. When I could finally drive it (I didn’t finish it until a few months after passing my test in the end) I had a car that I felt a part of and a reasonable knowledge of the mechanics that would set me up for life.
The car quickly became known as ‘Misty’, and was my only car for a long time. I became heavily involved with the Morris Minor Owners Club and, in particular, its Young Members Register. In the sixth form, then as an impoverished student at university, I ran the car on a shoestring, making do and mending when and where I could.
In 2011 I had an accident and a second – rapid – restoration followed. I used the insurance pay-out to entrust the welding to a ‘restoration expert’ whose workmanship left a lot to be desired. It was this that gave me the impetus later to buy my Traveller and learn to weld myself. More recently, after another five years of high-mileage use, I decided to stop firefighting the constant list of niggles and failures, take the car off the road and park it until I’d finished my convertible. As the convertible’s restoration reached its closing stages, I sent the saloon to
my friend Andy Clark, welder and fabricator
extraordinaire and a Morris Minor owner himself to boot (PC, April 2018). Andy replaced the inner arches, wing flanges, sills, closing panels and crossmember ends, as well as tidying up a lot of the welding previously ‘expertly’ undertaken.
Now back in the PC workshop, there’s one last bit of metalwork required. The rear screen has leaked badly and the parcel shelf, roof bead and surrounding metal work have all suffered quite badly. I’ve sourced a rear roof section from a scrapped car to use as a donor panel as required, but an awful lot of thinking and measuring will be required before I attack it with an angle grinder.
A grand plan
As for the plan for the rest of the car, it has already gone through several incarnations in my ownership. It’s also been off the circuit long enough now that when it comes back it has to be with a bang. A ‘Wow!’ factor. It’s already running a 1275 Marina A+ engine and Sprite gearbox, teamed with a 3.9:1 MG Midget differential, Marina disc brakes and Ford KA front seats. The latter mean that in
order to accommodate my long legs, I’ve fitted a smaller steering wheel – fine when moving but with wider than standard wheels, a pig to park, so I’ll be fitting a DC Electronics EPAS kit to help with this. Under the bonnet, I’ll be rebuilding the tired 1275 engine and plan to give it the aforementioned wow factor with an Eaton M45 supercharger, as fitted to a modern Mini Cooper. Underneath, I’ll be taking all I’ve learned on both this car and my convertible and fitting Marina 21mm torsion bars (if I can find some) and teaming these with telescopic shock absorbers front and rear. Finally, on top, I’ll be treating it to a bare metal respray soon. There are so many elements that would require ‘patch painting’ that in reality, going back to the bare and starting again is the easiest option. The hope is that it will be finished by the beginning of 2019 and will, once again, become a comfortable and competent daily driver. Stay tuned for regular updates in these pages.